It's in the Genes

There's probably a detail I should have added in my "tag" when I talked about spending time with my family. As much as my sisters (and I would even add my brother Drew to this) love to spend time together, we are extremely competitive...when it comes to playing games. We all love to win and we all hate to lose. In fact, I would say most of us are poor losers. You know the type, get up and walk away from the game without helping clean it up. There may be a few uncomfortable minutes of silence after a game. I assume that stems from the rule growing up that the loser had to clean up the game. I'm not sure how that rule started, but I remember it well. My parents didn't really think that one through. Not only did you lose, but now you had to clean up...and listen to the winner gloat. If they were truly thinking, they would have told us that the winner had to clean up. Then there's a real decision to be made...do I want to win or do I want to not clean up. Although thinking back, they may have tried that once, but the loser scattered the game to make cleaning up harder for the winner. (When I say scattered, it may have looked something similar to a tantrum).

My sweet sister-in-law Brooke loves to play games (and really we do too - especially when we win), but some of us in our older and wiser age try not to engage in game play for the sake of not causing inner turmoil. So she is usually left asking for a game and has a hard time getting us together on it. And when we do play, I now have a helper. Scott knows how much it makes me happy to win. So he will usually sit on the side of me where he can "strategically" make the right moves to help me out. I probably shouldn't write this down, but I know my sisters do the same thing. I think this trait can be traced back to my mom. Some may be surprised to find out that my sweet peaceful mother is not such a gamer either. You see, my parents almost faced a divorce (we tease) during their first year of marriage because of a game of Monopoly. My dad and my Aunt Myra (my mom's baby sister) teamed up together against my mom. Honestly, we did not own a game of Monopoly growing up. And if you bring it up today (after nearly 40 years of marriage) it is almost as if it happened yesterday.

So I have consciously tried to not pass this on to my children. When we play games together I have to fight off the urge to win (really...sad I know. But in defense I do think I need to win every once in a while to help teach them how to lose politely) and teach my children to have fun playing the game and fun when its all over. Which brings me to today...

Scott, Meg, and Josh where playing a game of Old Maid. Scott kept noticing Megan studying the back side of his cards carefully everytime it was her turn. He then finally figured out what she was doing. She had folded the Old Maid card so it had a crease in it. She then knew what card not to pick so she could ultimately win the game. I just want it on record that I did try...but I think some things are innate.